


proof samantha carter came home

by professortennant



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Iron Man AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 04:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15766755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/professortennant/pseuds/professortennant
Summary: Iron Man AU in which Samantha Carter comes home from Afghanistan a changed woman on a mission, locking herself up in her lab and designing a suit that will allow her to save the world. Her personal assistant and best friend, Jack O'Neill, is left to pick up the pieces.





	proof samantha carter came home

**Author's Note:**

> prompted on tumblr! you can reach me there for other prompts (professortennant.tumblr.com)

 

Jack sat on the metal stairs that led into Sam’s workshop, watching through the clear glass walls as she growled in frustration as wires sparked and the screens around her flashed  _System Failure._  She pointed a menacing finger at the robot that moved forward to put out a non-existent fire. “Daniel,” he heard her say, addressing the bot. “Don’t you dare.”

As a former soldier, he had an idea of the horrors Sam had seen in Afghanistan; had an idea what illusions may have been shattered; had an idea of the PTSD-like symptoms she was exhibiting. 

But he wasn’t stupid. He knew whatever it was that she was working on down here–the suit, the upgrades to the giant magnet in her chest, the increasingly erratic behavior–it was all pointing to something shifting monumentally, not just with her, but between them.

More nights now, Sam traipsed up the stairs, exhausted with dark bags under her eyes, and collapsed on the couch next to him as he finished up paperwork for  _Carter Industries._ Her head pillowed itself on his shoulder and she sighed and snuggled into him, relying on him to keep her safe from nightmares. 

Teal’c, her body guard and friend, was just as likely to become a sudden human pillow, but it was only Jack who slipped his hands under her knees and back and lifted her up, carrying her to bed and brushing her hair back, kissing her forehead and promising to never leave. 

He’d almost lost her–thought her dead and gone and buried in the bottom of a desert ravine. He’d done grief before, nothing would compare to losing Charlie. But losing Sam? Losing her smile, her laugh, her tongue-between-her-teeth smirk and the excited stamp of her feet when she broke through a problem and launched herself at him, pressing a sloppy kiss to his cheek? The grief of that loss came close.

And now, for all that he had her back, it still felt like she was incredibly far away. She was angry and frustrated. The implication that  _Carter Industries_  was in any way involved with supplying weapons to America’s enemies was devastating and to know that those weapons were destroying the lives of innocent civilians? Even more so. 

So she had returned to him and immediately turned their lives upside down, burying herself in her lab and foregoing food and his attempts to bring her up to the surface. 

_“C’mon, Carter,” he enticed, waving her favorite coffee in front of her face and holding it just out of reach and stepping back towards the stairs. “Just follow the coffee.”  
_

_She scowled and took a deliberate gulp of her old, stone-cold coffee on her desk and stuck her tongue out at him. He sighed and, because he was hopelessly in love with her and cared that she at least got something hot and fresh inside her, he caved and swapped her old coffee for the fresh one._

_She grinned at him, triumphant, and squeezed his hand thankfully. “While you’re here, I need your help.” Without further explanation, she tugged her shirt off and stood before him in a black bra, her magnetic implant on display between her breasts._

_His eyes went wide and his gaze darted from her face to the magnet. She was stunning–lean waist, pert breasts, flushed skin. He stepped forward as if the magnet in her chest was pulling him in, as well. His hand raised and traced the outline where metal met skin and she shivered. This was the thing keeping her alive and he’d never felt so grateful for a hunk of metal._

_“Sam…”  
_

_His voice was husky and thick with emotion. He didn’t know how to say how scared he was, how she changed his life for the better, how he was terrified he would lose her._

_She swallowed and flashed him a false smile, all bravado to cover her feelings. “C’mon,” she said, hopping into the reclined chair and beckoning him over. “My hands are small enough to change the core, but I need you here just in case.”_

_“Just in case?” he asked dubiously, nervously looking at the EKG pads and vital sign monitors.  
_

_“If things start beeping, just hit the big red button, okay?”  
_

_“Sam, I don’t know–”  
_

_“Too late.”  
_

_With quick fingers, she plucked the core from her chest and tossed it at Jack, who caught it and stared open-mouthed, as she deftly replaced the gap with a fresh, glowing core. She pressed the corresponding core in with a snap and ripped the EKGs off her chest, hopping off the chair and beaming at him, slipping her shirt back on._

_“Good as new.”  
_

_He stared at her, holding the old core out to her. She frowned at the mangled, leaking core and pushed it back at him. He saw her eyes flash with something–fear, disgust, grief, relief._

_“Toss it,” she said, turning back to her computers and sipping at the hot coffee he brought. He frowned, turning the object over in his hand. This was what kept her alive, what brought her back to him. It seemed wrong to throw it away.  
_

_He pocketed it, its warmth pressing against his thigh in his pocket. “Five more minutes, Carter,” he warned, clearing away her cups and heading for the door. “And then I’m dragging you out of here.”_

_“Promises, promises,” she said distractedly.  
_

That had been weeks ago and Jack had been helpless to do little more than sit back and do what he could to make sure she didn’t kill herself as she suited up night after night, determined to make things right. So he was her rock, for as long as she needed him. 

He sighed and stood from his spot on the stairs and pushed his way into her lab, pausing to look momentarily at her dilapidated plants on the back table. He would need to replace them before long. For as long as he’d begun working as her personal assistant, he’d been swapping her dead plants out for fresh ones, determined to let her keep up the belief that she had a green thumb. “It’s because I talk to them,” she’d once told him proudly. He didn’t have the heart to tell her he’d been watering and replacing them as she killed them. 

Continuing into the belly of her lab, not a single wrench or equation or folder out of place, Jack reached Sam’s desk where she was hunched over, furiously scribbling out corrections to the aerodynamics of her suit. 

“Carter,” he called out to her softly, hand brushing over the nape of her neck. She jerked under his touch and turned her face up to his, eyes glassy with exhaustion. 

“What time is it?”

“’What  _day_  is it?’ would be a better question. C’mon, up, up, up.” He slipped his arms beneath her armpits and tugged her up and out of her chair. “I made dinner,” he enticed as she scrambled to bring her notebook with her. She froze and dropped the notebook on the table as her stomach rumbled. 

“Pizza?” she asked hopefully.

“Pizza,” he confirmed with a smile.

She let him lead her up the stairs to the dining table, leaning heavily against his side and tugging his arm around her waist. He flexed his fingertips against her hip and rubbed at the small patch of skin that her shirt exposed. She burrowed in closer to him. 

This–the closeness, the physical affection–this was new since Afghanistan, too. Before, their touches had been fleeting and flirting, but never lingering, never like this. Jack was man enough to admit that it was a change in her that he wasn’t complaining about. 

He felt her freeze at his side as she took in the box in the center of the table.

“I told you to throw it away,” she said, voice tight and controlled, staring at the mangled core now housed in a clear shadowbox. 

He bent his head low and brushed his lips over her ear. “Trust me,” he breathed against her. “Go look.”

Stepping back, he watched as she took shaky steps towards the table and pick the box up, fingers tracing the sharp edges and vertices. “Proof Samantha Carter came home,” she read aloud. 

He stepped up to her, hand on her back–warm and comforting. “You came back, Sam,” he says softly, voice low and husky. “You  _survived_  and you came back–back home, back to me.”

She put the box down on the table and turned in his arms, throwing her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest. He closed his eyes and held her tight, nuzzling his jaw against the side of her head and hushing her as she took deep, shuddering breaths. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” Her admission is muffled against his shirt and he strokes his hand over the back of her head. He doesn’t know if she means what she’s doing with  _them_  or with what she’s doing down in the lab with that suit. 

Either way, he doesn’t care because  _he_  knows.

“You’re doing the best you can, Sam.” He presses a kiss to her temple and fights the urge to cup her jaw and press a kiss to her lips, to trail a line of kisses across her jaw and down her neck. She holds him tight and then pulls away, wiping at her eyes. 

“Thank you,” she murmurs, stroking a finger over the box and looking up at him from beneath wet eyelashes. “For being here for me.”

Jack reaches out and brushes his fingers over the curve of her cheek. “Always,” he affirms.

 


End file.
